Anthony Crosland

Charles Anthony Raven Crosland (29 August 1918-19 February 1977) was a British Labor Party MP who served in Parliament from 1950 to 1955 and from 1959 to 1977. A prominent socialist intellectual, Crosland offered positive alternatives to the left and right wings of the party in his 1956 book The Future of Socialism.

Biography
Anthony Crosland was born in St. Leonard's-on-Sea, Sussex, England on 29 August 1918, and he studied at Oxford before serving as a British Army paratrooper during World War II. He returned to academic life after the war as an economist at Oxford, but he left in 1950 to become the Labor Party MP for South Gloucestershire. He made his name with the publication of The Future of Socialism (1956), which was the leading inspiration to revisionists in the Labor Party. In it, he claimed that increasing equality should be Labor's main aim, and that nationalization was not vital in achieving this. Instead, he focused on Keynesian demand management as the best way of spreading the benefits of an increasingly affluent Britain. As Secretary of State for Education in 1964-1967, he closed most grammar schools, believing them to be anti-egalitarian. Instead, he developed the comprehensive state school system. In 1967-1970 and 1974-1977, he occupied a number of Cabinet posts, and he was Foreign Secretary in 1976 to 1977, until he died suddenly. He bequeathed to Labor the idea that socialism must update itself in order to remain relevant to people's everday needs.